I actually thought it was a great double save . You can bash England because they are horrible to watch and are nailed on to underperform at Russia but they still qualified comfortably. I wouldn't go to Russia or Qatar as a fan but I'm still glad they qualified. Seems perverse to criticise a keeper even after a 1-0 win because a poor referee may have wrongly adjudged a great match winning double save as a foul.
The thing was, he had pushed the ball out for a corner, so why catch the attackers' ankle and run the risk???
World rankings: England 15th, Scotland 43rd, Slovakia 19th, Slovenia 55th, Lithuania 120th and Malta 191th.
In truth, there aren't many worse. Factor in Slovenia's population (2.06m) compared to ours, (53.01m) and the fact that they defended stoically (like DF's NCFC recently ) and held out until the 94th minute before a miss-hit shot dribbled over the line pathetically, coupled with the fact the we were held 0-0 in Ljubljana early in the qualifiers and then, to confound things still further, put Mr Pastry, alias Joe Hart in goal for every match regardless of form of he or others and our Russian campaign will be group stages only. England showed zero cohesion, pace (Walker and Rashford apart) and finesse last night. Small wonder there were thousands of empty seats on show Bah! BAH!
I think that's pretty unfair. I think Butland is a great keeper, he just isn't getting picked by our clown of a manager. The reality is that I think that we have other players of a fairly high quality. Walker is a great player, Dier and Rose are both also good enough for the international stage, not the very best, but no team has 11 world beaters. Alli has not fully realised his potential in an England shirt, but he is undeniably a great player, Real Madrid do not make noises about signing average players! Add to that i think Phil Jones has started to mature into a good centre half, Cahill is OK, Keane decent, but Stones a liability with potential to be great. Sterling and Ox-Chamb have great pay, some skill, if only they had a brain! They could still be good if given simple instructions to follow in a well drilled team. This however is where we truely fall down. Southgate chapped his lips all the way to the top job, but the reality is he is hideously under qualified and we will never perfrom well with him as Gaffer. Adequately? maybe, if you consider qualifying adequate, but without even a hint of sparkle, we can all once again look forward to an embarassing exit in Russia with a wimper rather than a roar. what's the answer? We've tried the best of English, we tried high profile foreigners. How about the best of foreign with experience of English football? Southgate will have to fail as he will in Russia before any change is made, who next that will be the question? Bah!
That's a travasty!................................... there is no way we are the 15th best in the world! Bah!
I'm not excited about England and presume they will struggle to get out of the group stages but they have qualified against teams ranked lower than them as expected.
Pretty sure I heard a stat last night that England were unbeaten in their last 37 qualifiers in total or at home . Can't muster up enough negativity about them .
This augurs well for the future. Can't beat 'strong and stable' decision making, can you Blatter and Plaitini http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/41522970
So no vote was taken this time around, but - "Scudamore will seek a compromise solution before another meeting in the next few weeks, when the same topic will be back on the agenda." http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/41529455 I don't think it's going to go away any time soon.
Why does he need to seek a compromise? 14 teams disagree with it fundamentally. It's a slippery slope once you start biasing payments, I can't see any compromise they'll be happy with. It's not like the big teams are going anywhere, a European super league isn't happening any time soon. With England, I think we have good individuals, but poor coaching and tactics. They were a shambles going forward and their only attacking strategy was "give the ball to someone and see if they can't create something through individual skill".
What a play by Ireland: Wes a long pass to Ward in the left corner who puts in a long cross to the other side of the box for Murphy to head in. RoI 2-0 Moldova.
Walker's good on occasions when he's not back-passing straight to an opponent, I lost count of stray back-passes last night, luckily, their keeper twice threw out to Walker and he made the killer cross on the second one!
